The present invention relates generally to the field of inventory control and more particularly, is directed to a method and apparatus for identifying and counting objects using a preassigned identification tag.
The method and apparatus of the present invention has wide application in a number of fields where it is necessary to quickly, accurately and automatically identify objects for purposes of counting or sorting. The invention will be described herein with reference to inventory control of laundry and dry cleaning items. The invention is, however, not limited thereto.
In a laundry or dry cleaner, it is often necessary to sort the various items by color, type of fabric, size or degree of soiling as it is more efficient and cost effective to process a large number of similar items at the same time. In some situations, it is also necessary to sort items in accordance with a promised customer delivery schedule. Moreover, customized processing, such as the amount of starch to be used with a laundered shirt, requires additional sorting effort.
One way in which the sorting process can be completed is to do it manually with workers at one or more sorting stations. While manual sorting may be the easiest to implement, it is fraught with a number of problems and disadvantages. These problems include the fact that a manual sorting process is often labor intensive and tedious, especially when done on a continuous basis. Moreover, the reliability of human sorters will become suspect as the workers tire or lose their focus and attention on the task.
In addition, the process is complicated by the fact that the laundry is dirty and may well emit a foul order. Thus, human sorters are not likely to approach the task with a great deal of enthusiasm and motivation. Moreover, dirty laundry imposes certain health risks to human sorters which can not fully be eliminated, even with the use of rubber gloves and other protective garments.
In appreciation of the need to eliminated manual sorting, a number of methods and devices have been proposed for sorting and/or counting laundry items. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,778 issued in the name of Wortman et al., one such method senses the identity of an item by passing the item through a sensing station where the amount of light reflected from a coded tag attached to the item indicates its identity. In order for such a system to be effective however, the coded tag must be in a predetermined orientation at the time it is sensed. Needless to say, proper orientation of the tag is not always practical when one considers that laundry items presented for sorting often arrive in random orientation where many tags may be covered over by adjacent laundry items.
The Wortman patent notes that other prior art identification techniques include the use of uniform fields which permit identification based on perturbations of the field caused by identification tags. A further prior art technique involves the use of x-rays, Gamma rays and the like which when impinged on an identification tag or label results in secondary radiation. The secondary radiation can be detected and used for identification purposes. The Wortman patent is said to be an improvement on the use of secondary radiation as an identification mechanism.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,036,365 issued in the name of Rosenfeld is another example of a sorting techniques which relies on secondary radiation.
While the techniques disclosed in the Wortman and Rosenfeld patents represent an improvement over prior techniques, these improvements remain deficient in a number of areas. Accordingly, there is a great need in the art for an improved method and apparatus for automatically sorting and counting items such as laundry and dry cleaning articles.
Accordingly, it is an objective of the present invention to obviate the above-noted shortcomings and disadvantages of present methods and apparatus for sorting and counting items such as laundry and dry cleaning articles.
It is a further objective of the present invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for sorting and counting items with imposing no inconvenience to the user or operator of the system.
It is a still further objective of the present invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for sorting and counting items which is economical to implement and simple in operation.
It is a further objective of the present invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for sorting and counting items which is more economical than prior art approaches.
It is a still further objective of the present invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for sorting and counting items which can be readily implemented in an existing system.